Republican Monuments desecrated

[Bilk]

Sorry mate, but can't imagine any prods/unionist/loyalists going there to do that. Perhaps it's disaffected nationalists not happy with Gerry and the gang getting on so well with the DUPes.

[collina]

setanta said:

The Edentubber Maryters are nothing to do with Gerry A. and no Republican would destroy a monument like that. Destroying those Monuments don't just effect Sinn Féin its an attack on all Republicans.

Its a bit like the OO halls getting burned. Nationalists suspect the OO or loyalists do some of it. Protestants insist its catholics.

[Harry]

I've no liking for any Republican monument but i wouldn't destroy one either so i think its totally wrong.

[Bilk]

setanta said:

The Edentubber Maryters are nothing to do with Gerry A. and no Republican would destroy a monument like that. Destroying those Monuments don't just effect Sinn Féin its an attack on all Republicans.

Still can't see any prods/unionists/loyalists doing it, sorry my reply was tongue in cheek. It may have been just vandals, most of whom couldn't tell a republican monument from a statue of Nelson.

[Wasp]

Your'e the one with the pink coat on and with your back to Adams.

Setanta there are those who claim Loyalists attack their own halls to stir trouble. Then there were those from the nationalist community who attacked Harryville chapel.

Maybe the statue was attacked by nothing other than vandals or those who feel let down by sinn fein from the republican community. I can't see it being loyalists but I cannot say it wasn't.

Apart from that I do not condemn the attack on a monument as these men got their just deserts IMO. They were assembling a bomb and they were no more than dissidents just like the rira today are dissidents.

Why oh why is it an attack on all republicans? If I were a vandal I would wreck it myself, simple as that.

[Wasp]

WASP, I've never heard anyone say that the OO or Loyalists are burning their own Halls.

I have heard it a few times.

The paint at Harryville Chapel.... where did you hear that it was Republicans and where did they assumption come from?

I read it online but I also heard it from young people from a certain area in Ballymena. According to them it was common knowledge.

HTF were the Edentubber Men like the RIRA?

Well did they reject the views of the majority, did they have an electoral mandate, did they have substantial public support etc???
Now Adam's said at their commemoration to do with dissidents "These groups have no strategy, no programmes, no popular support and no real capacity - militarily or otherwise. They have chosen random acts of intimidation and isolated acts of individual violence which are politically ineffective and result only in pain and suffering for the individuals targeted and their families. The overall effect is retrograde at every level and in every sense. "

Doesn't these people who blew themselves up sound just like those Adam's is talking about in the rira or continuity ira???

Didn't the nationalist party leader Eddie McAteer say the same about them? How can Adams and co talk of sadness at these deaths and their bravery while condemning the dissidents now? Totally hypocritical.

And if you don't condemn this attack then you lose the moral right to condemn attacks on Loyalist/Unionist Icons/Halls because they are all, in todays world, unjustified sectarian attacks.

No setanta an orangehall does not equate a monument where terroriists blew themselves up while preparing a bomb to kill and maim others. To do with a loyalist paramilitary monument I totally agree with you that I have no moral right if I condemned an attack on them but not this one. If I am being totally honest I do not see the point in going out to wreck this statue but at the sametime I support those who did it or rather their actions.

A vandel doesn't go out with sledgehammers. This was planned.

Unfortunately vandals go out with many things and will destroy the first thing they think they can get away with but that doesn't mean it was vandals either.

Who do you think it was or are you going to wait to see what the security forces say about it?

[Wasp]

So what you are saying is that it is ok for the ira to go against everyone else but not the rira and that it is when the ira decide to end a campaign of terror that everyone else is wrong if they continue theirs? Didn't the ira continue there campaign when all sides begged them to stop?

These men who blew themselves up are no different to dissidents today, and it is highly hypocritical for sinn fein to honour them but pour scorn on todays dissidents.

Did the 2 from wexford have a political mandate then?

[Wasp]

George Keegan and Paddy Parle? So what you are saying is that because there was no gfa or st andrews agreement it was ok to carry out a campaign of terror even though the biggest nationalist party along the Irish government were totally against it? Now the biggest nationalist/republican party is sinn fein so who are they to tell those who go against the majority that they have nothing to offer especially when they themselves acted and supported the same kind of dissidents.

[Bilk]

setanta said:

WASP, did you miss this.
at the time there was no GFA or St Andrews Agreements. No political alternative.
There was a denial of basic democratic and civil rights.
There seemed to be no alternative. The enviroment wasn't right for it because the croppies were well and truely kept down.

what two from Wexford?

This has been a flag of convenience for republicans for quite some time setanta. There was a denial of basic civil rights for all the working classes in Northern Ireland since it's inception. Not just nationalists/republicans or Catholics for that matter. This was a myth touted by republicans to turn Catholics/nationalists against their protestant/unionist neighbours, in an attempt further the cause of republicanism.
There may have been an element of gerrymandering the boundries to insure a unionist victory at elections, but as we have seen, it made little or no difference electionwise when those boundries were corrected. Unionists were still by far the largest party in parliament, and still are. It didn't matter to me, and people like me who held the strings of power, because they were all the same. If proof were needed on that issue, we only need look at the Marty/Ian show. Whoever gets to power nothing changes. The working classes are still the working classes and are the bottom of the heap. Go look at the working class areas of Northern Ireland and tell me what has changed, nothing that's what. If anything has changed, it is that they have gotten worse. And that includes both nationalist and unionist working class areas. That was always the case and still is. So your remark about the croppies is both uncalled for and wrong. The working classes were kept down.

[Wasp]

The were Irishmen trying to Free Ireland from a regime that was religiously bigotted, sectarian and un-democratic,

They were dissidents and is that the ira you are describing above because that just about sums them up.

Yes. In the absense of an viable and truely democratic enviroment.

Please don't make me laugh, your partys commemoration of dissidents and their support/involvement in everything undemocratic especially during the last 30 odd years of sectarian violence which was continued even though the majority of nationalists opposed it etc just shows your hypocricy concerning democracy. You have no ground whatsoever to talk about anyone being undemocratic.

Are you a fan of the RIRA? What have the got to offer?

No I am not, they have got the same to offer as the ira members who blew themselves up in 1957. You can't have it bothways, you cannot show sadness and commemorate these men who went against the majority of nationalist opinion and then condemn those who now go against the majority of nationalsit opinion.

In the absense of an viable and truely democratic enviroment.

So you bomb and shoot people hooping to force them into submission to achieve your ambitions while at the sametime go against the majority of those you claim to be fighting for? Don't figure now does it?

WASP, Do you understand that that Monument was to us what your Cenotaphs are to you?

How can a monument for dissidents be the same as a monument for those who fought in the world wars with the support of their gov, and most of the people in the country that they belong to etc etc. IMO such logic is sick, warped and twisted and promotes/commemorates sectarian violence.

How would you feel if one of them, in an isolated rural area, was smashed to the ground in the dead of night with sledgehammers?

I would be absolutely disgusted considering war emorails are all over Europe and afar for those who bravely gave their lives. It wouldn't affect me if it was say an lvf statue or monument.

Who would you blame?

Gerry Adam's or anynearby priests.

[Wasp]

Well setanta try telling my family of the better opportunities that they had and that of my grandparents and there parents. Them being very poor is an understatement, they knew Portestants who were better off AND they knew Catholics who were better off.

When you talk about attempts to unite people, Instead of blaming the Unionists why don't you look at your own countrys doorstep, the rule of the Roman church which goes against Protestant values to the extreme, your own ira and their failed murderous campaigns, the violent nature of republicanism and then maybe without your green shades on you will see the reason Unionists were so worried about a U.I, you will see the real reason instead of blaming Unionists for scaremongering.

Funny thing is, it was the ira who continued to keep us apart, continued to create and maintain divisions between our communities along with loyalist paramilitaries. Yet you moan about Unionists and gerrymandering and trying to keep N.I within the UK etc. Now take a good look at what the ira done and maybe you will clearly see who caused the most division by a long shot and who caused the most bitter hatred by a longshot between two communities.

The more I hear your hypocritcal, onesided arguements the more I realize how we cannot even consider a U.I with the likes of sinn fein.

[Bilk]

setanta said:

Ah look, I know that the Protestant Working Classes had it bad as well BUT the entire state was designed as a Protestant State for a Protestant People.
It actually reminded me of Animal Farm by Orwell.
"Yeah you working class Protestants have it bad but imagine if the Papes got in"!
"Do you want Rome Rule"! etc etc to keep us divided.
The Big House Unionists could always point to the state jobs and the main industries (shipyards) being the almost exclusive domain of Protestant to back their points.

any attempt at uniting people and the Orange Card was played throughout the statelets history ( peoplesassembly.proboards49.com/index.cgi?board=sect&action=display&thread=1174985659 )

to say that the Protestant working classes as a whole had as little opportunity as the Catholics is misleading.

Well setanta, I speak from experience not what I read somewhere. This unionist lived in a two up two down kitchen house, with an outside lavvy and no hot running water, on the Donegall Road. The same house as my Catholic Nationalist friends and neighbours across the M1, on the Falls Road, lived in. The one thing that united us was our poverty. Try saying that quote about misleading to the people of the Shankill or the Newtownards Road of the time, they lived in the same conditions. We all lived in the same pathetic conditions. As for jobs it was not sectarian, but nepitism, if your dad worked in the shipyard the chances were you were going to. I had as much chance of getting a job in the shipyard as I had of getting to the moon. And there were Catholics working in the shipyard. The workforce in the shipyard reflected the political and religeous make up of the people who lived in the area. Very few travelled from outside of East Belfast to the shipyard, that's where the shipyard was situated.

[He_Who_Walks_in_The_Wilderness]

parhaps who ever did this wanted to make the newry/louth border a 'neutral' place were everybody could feel comfortable

[Wasp]

Good points bilk and lets not forget travel in those days was not as easy to get as nowadays. My own late grandparents had no inside toilet until the mid 80s or so and that was for a family of 11 stuck in a 2 bedroom terraced house.

What about the village area and the condition of the houses there?? And this is today and not 30 odd yrs ago.

[Wasp]

I answered about the cenotaph and you cannot compare a cenataph with a monument dedicated to dissidents. To do with respect I think that falls back on yourself by having monuments dedicated to terrorists who terrorized my community is hardly respectful now is it?